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Cheops
Was thinking while reading a Patrick O'Brian book that pirates in the Carib League would probably do pretty well with tall ships. There is a boom of magic in most Carib states, and a full blown houngan war, and a bust on heavy industry. This would make modern, metal ships very expensive. So expensive that magically-enhanced wooden ships may suddenly become competitive.

The object resistance of the components of a tall ship wouldn't be above 2 (worked wood, hemp, and cloth) or at most 3 (for cannons, ring bolts, other metal components). Use a steel bottom instead of the traditional copper. You could prepare the ship as a vessel and put a spirit in it. Or if that was too expensive you could inhabit specific components (air spirit in the sails, guardian spirit in the cannons, water spirit in the hull). Since the mage can easily help make the ship the threshold for enchanting stays low so anchoring can be done. Really ambitious mages could even bottom it with orichalcum!

And to take it one step further, you could make it the Black Pearl by using zombies and corpse cadavers to run the ship. You'd only need humans for the officers and warrant officers.

As I said 'though since magic should be pretty cheap and heavy, modern industry expensive, seeing something like this in a campaign should be believable.
Serial_Peacemaker
Well I do like the pirate aspect of shadowrun. However actual tall ships seems iffy. After all even if the carib itself has crappy industry ships are by definition mobile. I would be surprised if there were not ships in the waters all across the planet that were made in the north sea at a SK ship yard, the great lakes by Ares etc. However I am sure that the more magically active pirates do use things quite similar to what you propose. With wooden ships etc. However I think they would most likely be of a design and manufacture that would be somewhat alien to the traditional tall ship. If only so they could mount a more modern naval weapon.
Thane36425
You might see wooden hulled power boats. Those were quite common before fiberglass came along. Sailing ships could be used as recon, but they wouldn't stand much chance against a military vessel or an armed transport.
PBTHHHHT
Problem is that even making tall ships are rather resource intensive in terms of wood to make the hull, the cloth needed for the sails, the hundreds of feet of rope. It was a major endeavour back in the day to build the tall ships and I'm not sure if there's enough of the right kind of trees they need for the ships. England used up a lot of their forests (of oak and whatever trees they used) and I don't think the forests have ever recovered from that period.

Pirates will take what ships they can that are available and that's mostly modern day ships. Any tall ships they would pick up may be from museum pieces and private yachts they may come upon. The modern ships from the corporate shipyards would still be bought by the carib league.
bibliophile20
QUOTE (PBTHHHHT)
Problem is that even making tall ships are rather resource intensive in terms of wood to make the hull, the cloth needed for the sails, the hundreds of feet of rope. It was a major endeavour back in the day to build the tall ships and I'm not sure if there's enough of the right kind of trees they need for the ships. England used up a lot of their forests (of oak and whatever trees they used) and I don't think the forests have ever recovered from that period.

I thought that many of the forests (the remaining ones, that is) were regenerating with alarming speed, especially in places like the British Isles and Amazonia.
PBTHHHHT
Yes the forests are regenerating, but I can see certaing groups that would be unhappy if you start up with the massive deforestation project such as the amount needed for the tall ships. It all depends, it might be faster to build them now since there are now modern power tools to aid in making the ships, but then again, there's something to be said for being able to cast a hull from metal or plastic. The modern day tonnage capacity outstrips the tall ship designs.

By the way, I like the idea of tall ships running around, but I'm playing devil's advocate just to flesh out the feasibility and for what reasons/conditions that would allow for this to happen.
Cheops
Hate to burst your bubble but industrialization is what caused the deforestation of England...not the building of tall ships. What do you think they burned until they figured out better ways of using coal? Plus there's the need to clear forest to build, you know, cities and the farmland to support those cities.

Any pirate that goes up against a naval ship is a dumb-ass. Modern day pirates know enough not to do that so I figure that future pirates would also know that. The vast bulk of pirate activity is actually undertaken in port, not at sea, so you just need a lot of guys with knives and the willingness to kill someone for money. Also, tall ships become a lot more effective just by using explosive rounds instead of the old non-exploding shells. The guns that they used on the tall ships were actually as big, or bigger than the guns the Brits used to smash German tanks in WW2. As for defense, if you have magic you can make it as strong as modern ships. Pirates much rather take merchantmen and pleasure boats than a military vessel. Merchants have stuff that you can resell and you can use the boat too. Military vessels have nothing in them except a bunch of marines and big guns that can kill you.

The British had over 1000 tall ships on the list at the height of their naval deployment in the Napoleonic wars. Added to that were all the private men of war, who were private citizens who owned and outfitted a ship and sailed under a letter of marque. Some wealthy patrons even had small squadrons of privateers. This is back when these ships were modern and expensive.

Imagine nowadays. The spot price for US lumber is about 260 per tonne. Take for example, the Surprise (of Aubrey fame), which was a real ship that displaced about 350 tonnes (if I remember correctly) fully equiped and carried 28 guns (all of 9 lbs or bigger which can take out any of Pz series tanks up to the later IV models). That's roughly 78,000 USD to buy the equivalent amount of wood. Since we're building this thing ourselves we don't need to mark-up for construction etc. Probably wouldn't run you more than 100,000 or 120,000 just for the mundane, raw materials. And as stated the building time would be much lower due to power tools, AR overlays, modern construction techniques, etc.

A ship of that size would be more than a match for any merchantman or cruise ship, especially when magically enhanced. A Guardian spirit inhabited cannon is a scary thing.
PBTHHHHT
Burst my bubble, hardly, I love to read up on information and if I get corrected on it, that's fine. After the schooling I did, I know how much I do not know and welcome input from people who have info and thoughts on the matter.

One problem I do see is something like this would be a bit noticeable, especially to authorities. "Be on the look out for a large masted ship." Most of the piracy such as those occurring in the South Asian Straits are mainly by smaller fast boats that would go up and have the pirates board the ship. The problem is that you can't tell who the pirates are from the rest of the boats. The magical augmentation, while that's fine and such, what can they do to be less noticeable, especially from maritime patrol?

edit: btw, I do own the first book of the Master and Commander series, I bought it to read before the movie came out. I do love that day and age.

Oh, speaking of deforestation of england from the industrial age, yes, there is that from the need of charcoal. But there was definitely overharvesting of the mature wood needed for shipbuilding. Tell me, how much wood is needed for one ship? How much are also needed to help in forging of all the needed iron also? (which would be moot in the current shadowrun conversation since there'll be plentiful iron provided without needing to use wood as a power source for forging).

http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/S2003/...orestation.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/art...y_feature.shtml
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals....3/mcneill.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation
Crakkerjakk
Fun fact:

Back in the day(1745-1844) the most successful pirate was a Chinese woman who took over her husband's fleet when he died. Controlled an estimated 2000 ships and over a hundred thousand sailors. The Chinese government at the time declared war on her, got their hoops soundly kicked, and went to foreign powers(Portugal and England, I think) for help. They agreed, and also got their tails handed to them. She finally got tired of pirating, and asked the government for a pardon, retiring to run a gambling den, and died a ridiculously wealthy old woman.
PBTHHHHT
Yup, read about her when I was looking up on chinese pirates, was curious about the one that Chow Yun Fat is playing for the third pirates of the carribean movie.
knasser

I tend to restrict the size and complexity of objects that can be possessed in my game by Force (e.g. "no - your little air spirit can't possess the entire house"), so this would take a high force spirit in my game (but there's no such restriction in the RAW): Possessing / Inhabiting the ship! Some of the downsides to a wooden ship are compensated for this way, e.g. a force 7 spirit would lend it 14 points of hardened armour against normal weapons. That's got to be equivalent to a metal hull. Movement power inherent and permanent, not to mention some of the more outlandish powers - need I point out that water spirits have Weather Control as an optional power?

And I can certainly see some spirits being more comfortable in an old fashioned sailing ship than some clanking, complex, computer driven monstrosity. Particularly some pre-existing Free Spirit. I picture the old sailor sitting on the dock watching the tides when the faint whisper is heard by him alone... "If you build it, I will come" biggrin.gif

That's not to say it has to be a nice spirit. A powerful shadowspirit with Concealment and Movement could make for a deeply sinister ship. Give it a spirit pact with its chosen captain and voila - Flying Dutchman.

I don't see a big flock of tall ships. But in a setting where dark magic has returned, I can see that an old sea ghost story might have a bit more substance than you'd want.

-K.
Thain
The stealth capacity of a sailing vessel should not be underestimated, yes, it will show up on radar and visual scanning (i.e, guy with binoculars), but it is going to be quiet, have little heat signature, zero power consumption, et cetera.

I don't see many pirates using it, but a sigle possessed Flying Dutchman, definatly.
nezumi
Keep in mind, I don't think it would be financially feasible to make full sized frigates or brigs. These ships would be capping out as sloops, ships which are able to quickly sail at almost any point, which are light-weight, easy to make, almost invisible to radar and sonar. They won't be able to outrun any military ship and some freighters, but they'll be almost impossible to spot until they get within visual range. With magical support, they'll still be a threat to a freighter (or specifically, to its crew). The question is whether they take cargo by manning the freighter and bringing the whole boat back to sell, or by just taking the few tons their small ship can hold (two tons of cyberdecks would clearly pay for itself, but two tons of soy probably wouldn't).
PBTHHHHT
One thing for modern day pirates is they will take some of the crew has hostage and they'll try and rob the ship's safe. Yeah, if the cargo has a high value per weight/volume then I can see them taking some of the cargo. The other consideration is if they have a potential large scale port city nearby with questionable businessmen. Years ago, there was a Times article on a group of pirates that took a large cargo ship and they sailed it to China and IIRC the pirates managed to reap a profit... But, I think this was an extreme case.

Very cool though, the merchant ship's watch standing there on the bridge on a dark night, a shroud of fog comes out and envelops the ship. Then, the watch stares stunned as a 'ghost' ship silently coming out of the shroud of fog up close to a large modern day merchant ship. The grappels fly out and the pirates being swarming up on to the decks of the merchant ship (even better, a cruise ship), and the fun begins as those who are unluckly cry out as their body tasted steel from blades and bullets. After a relatively short time, the pirates scurry back onto their ship and the 'ghost' ship silently slips away into the night back into the fog... slowly the fog begins to dissipate around the merchant ship, leaving only the stunned survivors and the cries of those unfortunate...
Cheops
Spirits with concealment make for a deadly effective pirate ship no matter if it is modern. Fleets of these things will probably be pretty uncommon but imagine a Houngan building one or two full blown "ghost ships" and fighting the Houngan War that way! Would be a viable threat to the other houngans and the other pirates. And presumably some of those might respond.

These old ships are a lot sturdier and more able than people seem to be giving them credit. There is no fuel in these bad boys, only a magazine. This makes them a hell of a lot less vulnerable than an equivalent modern ship which uses hordes of fuel and therefore needs a lot of storage space for it. Ships only sink a few ways--hits below the waterline, taking in water through other holes, or a hit to the magazine or fuel tanks. I don't see many merchantmen willingly spending the thousands of dollars per shot for torpedoes, and how effective are assault rifle rounds against the barrier rating of 3' of wood? (not to mention possible hardened spirit armor). Plus you can't really demoralize Guardian spirit inhabited marine zombies...so watch out!
PBTHHHHT
How effective is it against mounted assault cannons, quad .50 caliber guns, grenade launchers, attack drones (air and water), hell maybe even flame throwers and incindiery rounds/grenades?

A response by the corporations hit a number of times by the Hougan fleet might be including Q-ships and such in their fleet (disguised merchantships), hiring runners and security details for ambushes, any number of things including mages/shamans they can hire.

edit: Anyway, I can see this being effective in hit and fade tactics. As long as they play it smart and avoid traps and such. Most of the merchant ships they'll face will be easy pickings, but if they make too large of dent in shipping and who they're hitting in particular, I can see a nasty response by whatever corp/nation.
nezumi
Modern torpedoes would be completely ineffective against anything but the largest tall ships. Freighters would have to defend themselves relying on small arms or rockets and missiles, with small arms probably being the most cost effective. Assault cannons and MMGs would be the word of the day. Unfortunately, with freighters running on the small skeleton crews they generally rely on, a small, quick sloop could probably close in pretty quickly and avoid most of the fire. It would be very, very dangerous, but quite possible.
Jack Kain
You do know that piracy thrives even today. Modern pirates use small speed boats possibly mounted with machine guns. They move in swiftly on large slow moving vessels. Oil Tanker's, Cargo Ships and Cruise Lines.
http://www.cargolaw.com/presentations_pirates.html
This little report should help out in under standing modern piracy.

Now lets look at some SR possibilities.

Using small boats would still be ideal. They are less likely to show up, magic can easily be used to disguise or even render the small ship invisible.

That being said, The Carribean likely has to many military vessels in the area for effective SR piracy. It be easier to strike the ship in port or wait until it travels into a nations waters that doesn't maintain a sizable navy.

A wooden sailing ship might be hard to track, but it wouldn't be hard to find once it makes port. It stand out in the modern world. And the Carribean would have to many military grade vessels anway. Be they real millitary or corp.

I'd imagine SR pirates to operate in much the same way as modern pirates in similar areas.


PBTHHHHT
With a rigger at the control of the freighter along with the host of devices/sensors that can be placed throughout the ship, add in remote gun drones and the ability to open and seal hatches and such. Who knows, it depends on how much the shipping corporation are willing to spend to outfit their fleet. If it's a very large cargo vessel with a good amount of valuable cargo, a megacorp can easily place some countermeasures especially for boarders.

edit: what Jack Kain said, but then again, I mentioned that earlier in my earlier post about fast ships that would blend with normal traffic.
nezumi
I doubt they'd go into public ports with it. They'd moor it in a cove somewhere, out of sight, then use another, modern boat to transfer gear. If they're based out of somewhere with an isolated village, they'd have all the materials needed to maintain a wooden sloop, they could disappear easily, and the money from a successful raid would more than make up the cost of services rendered by said village.
PBTHHHHT
QUOTE (Cheops @ Feb 24 2007, 12:25 PM)
I don't see many merchantmen willingly spending the thousands of dollars per shot for torpedoes, and how effective are assault rifle rounds against the barrier rating of 3' of wood? (not to mention possible hardened spirit armor).


My other question I do have is also this. If we're talking about frigates (~fifth rated and 6th rated) and other ship of the lines, yes we're talking about very thick hulls. The USS constitution, a frigate had planks around 7" and made from 2,000 live oaks (http://www.ussconstitution.navy.mil/historyupdat.htm). If we're now talking smaller size such as sloops for the pirates, which time period because the size does change depending on the time period. I'd really like some reference to how think the hull is that you're talking about.

My other question is that you're talking about merchantmen. Many of the large cargo ships today are owned by large shipping corporations (with the heavy predominance of Megacorporations in the World of Shadowrun), they do have the money and resource capacities for more defenses, especially in the less secure times of the Sixth World. Just food for thought.
Mistwalker
Interesting article Jack

I would see the Ghost Ship only appearing in fog (magical or mundane), with it's home port being somewhere where it cannot be observed. Maybe the underground anchorage from pirate novels, with a tunnel leading to a warehouse, where the pirated goods are loaded onto legit vessels.

If they take the whole ship, they set up a phantom ship, from Jack's article, with a hacker(s) inserting the new name and destination in various databases.
Cheops
QUOTE (PBTHHHHT)
My other question I do have is also this. If we're talking about frigates (~fifth rated and 6th rated) and other ship of the lines, yes we're talking about very thick hulls. The USS constitution, a frigate had planks around 7" and made from 2,000 live oaks

Just went back and looked at my other books. Planks would be about 3" thick yes. A 74-gun frigate would take 2000 trees and 47 skilled tradesmen about 1 year to build. A smaller ship, of about 30 guns, would take about 26 tradesmen 1 year to build. You can cut those construction times down for modern power tools and if you build it Exalted-style and use nothing but Task spirits and zombie labor you can probably cut it down to a 3rd of a year.

The way I remember things from the book is that there is a fair amount of independent shipping left in the Carib League and that as long as you aren't messing with the CAS or Aztlan shipping lanes you should be okay.

Remember you're talking about a ship that travels at about 9 knots plus however fast a force 6 spirit can Movement it (which will be faster than a modern ship btw) and everyone and everything is at a -6 dice pool modifier to see it. It doesn't need to get into a running gun battle. Lurk in coves and inlets near shore and dash out to board or else lurk in magical fog and then attack. Magically enhanced marines are Scary.

Plus there are plenty of pirate-friendly ports in the Carib and lots of sheltered coves regardless, so there are lots of places that this Black Pearl could hide. I don't think it's as unlikely as a lot of people seem to think.

BTW, how far does an extended detect enemies spell reach? Mage could always use that to detect Q-ships and military patrols looking for him. Give the authorities the laugh.
nezumi
If we look at a sloop-of-war, that pretty well describes what I was thinking of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloop-of-war

10-18 guns.

Remember also, while the megas certainly have the resources to defend a ship, it's all a question of cost-benefit ratios. Putting $50,000 worth of equipment on every freighter quickly gets very, very pricey, especially if it almost never gets used. So certainly, any of the corps could blow this sloop out of the water if they knew to expect it. The primary benefit of the sloop is surprise.

I also imagine it's one of few ships that could attack freighters out at sea rather than in port. Small boats are generally limited by fuel, large ones are too easy to spot. A sloop is limited only by food for the crew (and of course, questions of profit, but if we have the village houngan running out of Guayana, their time is cheap). With a spirit's help, they don't have to worry about the environmental pressures that used to restrict small boats to more coastal areas. So they can cruise the shipping lanes a thousand miles out from shore, almost completely silent, catch their prey at night when they're hidden from radar, sonar and sight, then use the spirit's power to hide them again as they escape. They put-to somewhere on the Spanish main and use trucks to transport the goods from their little coastal village to Amazonia for sale. As long as the village supports them, they require only the cost of tools and a few odds and ends.
Thain
For what its worth, piracy occurs in the Carribean today, not just the horn of Africa.

Carribean pirates tend to be drug runners or human trafficers who happen across a rich American in a pleasure yatch, and decide to pull the nautical equivelent of carjacking a rich guy's Mercedes. Infrequent, mind you, but fairly profitable.

Beleive it or not, back in... oh... `03, I think it was, some thing similar happened on Lake Michigan. Drunk idiots decide to wave handguns at a nice Canadian couple, and steal their cabin cruiser... the Canadians radio the USCG from their dingy, and the drunk idiots get to stare down a fully armed cutter a few hours later. eek.gif

I'm not exactly certain what became of those morons, but they were charged with piracy. I think we turned them over to Canada.

Here's a safe boating tip: do not run from the Coast Guard. You'll lose.
hyzmarca
Personally, if I were rich enough to own a yacht I'd cut out the middle man and just mount a phalanx on its bow.
Thain
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
Personally, if I were rich enough to own a yacht I'd cut out the middle man and just mount a phalanx on its bow.

If you pay the tax, the pruchase price, and figure out a way tomount...more power to you.

But frankly, you'd be better off with a good handgun, and a nice rifle.
hyzmarca
You can't shoot down missiles with a handgun.
Butterblume
You actually can shoot down missles with a handgun, but I wouldn't depend on it;).
ornot
If someone's launching missiles at your pleasure boat, you're pretty much fragged anyway.
Banaticus
As someone else pointed out, most of the juicy targets will be owned by mega corps which have one awesome advantage that pirates didn't have to contend with in bygone years -- satellites.

Remember, if someone isn't looking at the video camera in real time, if they're watching recorded footage, invisibility doesn't work. So, once you find the ship where the ship was, you extrapolate how fast it can go and where it might be -- then you fly a couple mages onto a destroyer and they set off hunting the tall ship down, constantly checking the recorded satellite images (which could be updated every five minutes or so).
Mistwalker
Hich level spirit concealment would help even with the satelite and the wake left by the ship
nezumi
QUOTE (Banaticus)
Remember, if someone isn't looking at the video camera in real time, if they're watching recorded footage, invisibility doesn't work.

Do you have any source for that statement? Because its contrary to every SR game I've played.

Secondly, are you at all aware of the costs you're talking about? You're going to hire a group of people to search every foot of the entire Caribbean because a small, wooden ship hijacked a few hundred thousand nuyen of cargo? How much do you think it costs to train and maintain a crew of a hundred satellite photo examiners? At that point, it's far more cost effective to just put a few more guards and bigger guns on each ship, or upgrade their sensors or something. The satellite option is only cost-effective if you KNOW the ship will be attacked and approximately when, and at that point it's cheaper to get an aerial drone, so its still not the best method.
Thain
The Caribbean Sea is 2,754,000 kmē (1,063,000 square miles) in area....

The KH-12 (aka Keyhole) spy satellite can take images every five seconds, which is basically about as "real time" as it gets. Ground resolution is probably 0.15 meters (6 inches) or better. (This is all from Jane's Defence Weekly, fwiw.)

The USCGC Eagle (WX-327) is the only tall ship that ever sees regular use by the US military, and is a pretty good basis for our fictional flying dutchman. She's capable of 17 kt (31 km/h) under sail, has a waterline length of 234 ft (71.0 m) and a beam of 39 ft 1 in (11.9 m).

Let's round things off a bit, and call it 70 m x 12 m. That's 840 mē or 0.84 kmē

Now, I have no doubt that a KH-12 satellite could, in fact, detect a 840 mē object from orbit. This things can read license plates, after all...

The problem is finding a moving object.

The Eagle is capable of moving at a speed of 8.6 meters per second, which means it moves greater than its own length in under 10 seconds. The spy satelite can only capture an image every 5 seconds, so it has to be capturing wide enough area that the ship stays in the frame for several seconds.

But, this gets tricky when you consider that the ship takes up less than 0.0003% of the Caribbean's surface area. Let's assume that you have an idea of which 1% of the sea that the ship is in... you've only reduced things to the point where the ship is 0.003% of the search area... and it's moving.

It is very, very hard to track a moving naval fleet by satellite, unless you are monitoring transponders, SIGINT, heat, or something else...

Frankly, if you wantto find one ship in the Carribean, your best bet is some Coasties in a helo, with good eyesight and powerful binoculars... and have them sit between where you think the ship is coming from, and where you think its heading. This is how we find 12' speedboats loaded with cocaine... and we're not 100% successful.

BIG Ocean, tiny ship.
Austere Emancipator
840m^2 is 0.00084km^2 or 0.0000000003% of the surface area of the Caribbean (or 0.00000003% of 1/100th the surface of the Caribbean). So, uhh, yeah, searching it by taking pictures of where it might be is not a good idea with modern technology.

How you see spy satellites working in the 2070s, though, is another matter. Are their capabilities described in any canonical SR literature?

I assume discussing different ways of physically defending the ships from the conventional threats posed by the sorts of vessels and equipment mentioned here would be pointless since the whole point is using lots and lots of magic for all aspects of pirating, right?
bibliophile20
Let's also not forget the wonderful effects of cloud cover when it comes to finding a wooden ship; it's not going to have a major infrared signature, which means that you're going to have to search in the visual spectrum, which means that the ship can hid underneath cloud cover--which an air spirit would undoubted be happy to provide.
Cheops
Funny enough the best way to find our Flying Dutchman is to track it astrally. Thing would shine like a beacon.

This monstrosity is HARD to find and you're not going to be able to stop it.

Best case scenario: it is cruising along at the 15 knots that the Eagle is capable of. With a force 3 spirits that becomes 45 knots and with a force 6 spirit that becomes an incredible 90 knots! According to Wikipedia the current Iroquois-class destroyers used by the RCN can go a max of 29 knots and the proposed Zumwalt-class destroyers in the USN are only capable of a 30.3 knot speed.

Also, if it were a Water spirit how would the movement power work? Would the ship be able to submerge like the Flying Dutchman did in the movie?

So the Gorch Fock-class of barques, made with wood instead of steel, would probably weight the same since you use the lost weight in the steel-wood conversion to add a gun deck. So displacement at full load is 1510 tons or 151,000 kilograms. It would be an Enchanting + Magic (2*3=6, 1 day) extended test to prepare the ship as a vessel and would require 15,100 radicals or 30,200 refined reagents. Hmm...that's actually pretty expensive unless your GM is willing to make a "regular wood" category instead of having to use rare hardwoods.
nezumi
QUOTE (Cheops)
Funny enough the best way to find our Flying Dutchman is to track it astrally. Thing would shine like a beacon.

Not with concealment power, it wouldn't.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Cheops @ Feb 26 2007, 07:26 PM)
This monstrosity is HARD to find and you're not going to be able to stop it.

Best case scenario: it is cruising along at the 15 knots that the Eagle is capable of.  With a force 3 spirits that becomes 45 knots and with a force 6 spirit that becomes an incredible 90 knots!  According to Wikipedia the current Iroquois-class destroyers used by the RCN can go a max of 29 knots and the proposed Zumwalt-class destroyers in the USN are only capable of a 30.3 knot speed.

By those calculations, AGM-84 and BGM-109 still outpace the magiboat by 400 knots, and future ASMs by more than 5000 knots. Not all that hard to stop it, actually.

[Edit]Here's a cheat patrol craft with a maximum speed of 98 knots, legal for SR3, from almost 3 years back when I last wondered about SR naval combat.[/Edit]
Cheops
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
QUOTE (Cheops @ Feb 26 2007, 07:26 PM)
This monstrosity is HARD to find and you're not going to be able to stop it.

Best case scenario: it is cruising along at the 15 knots that the Eagle is capable of.  With a force 3 spirits that becomes 45 knots and with a force 6 spirit that becomes an incredible 90 knots!  According to Wikipedia the current Iroquois-class destroyers used by the RCN can go a max of 29 knots and the proposed Zumwalt-class destroyers in the USN are only capable of a 30.3 knot speed.

By those calculations, AGM-84 and BGM-109 still outpace the magiboat by 400 knots, and future ASMs by more than 5000 knots. Not all that hard to stop it, actually.

Yes but not many merchantment are going to be using missiles--at several thousan nuyen per shot--against a threat. It's too expensive. Plus you have a force 6 spirit in the hull which makes her immune to normal weapons. I was only using destroyers as an example, taking them to be the fastest of the big ships.

Remember, we're not talking about going up against military vessels. We're talking about merchantmen and cruise ships.
Thain
The U.S. Navy's Mk-50 advanced lightweight torpedo... one of their fastest, for use against the faster, deeper-diving and more sophisticated submarines... has a speed of ~40kn (74 km/h).

Our Flying Dutchman is moving at 90 kn, more than twice the speed of the torpedo. (And, incidentally, the same wind speed of a Category 2 hurricane.) Thus, our Dutchman may simply outpace any torpedoes until the batteries on the darn thing die!

Now, an anti-ship missile stands an excellent chance, but targeting is going to be a real wench. Every modern navy does everything in their power to reduce their ships radar signatures and also take measures to reduce their infra-red and acoustic signatures. A tall-ship, with no running diesel engine, has effectively zero infra-red or acoustic telltales, and their radar signature is going to be fairly low too. Frankly, radar sucks for finding ships from other ships... you've heard pilots in the movies talk about "flying under the radar?" Guess why? It doesn't work great close to the surface... and guess where ships are?

Further, there is nothing to stop our Dutchman and her crew of magical cyberpirates from employing any other the dozens of anti-ship missile counter measures available. Anti-missile missiles, anti-aircraft guns, close-in weapon systems (e.g. the phalanx mentioned above), jammers, and good old fashioned chaff... Plus, you've got your shadowrun options like anti-missile lasers, chaff/decoy drones, low-force spirits, barrier spells, and so on.
Austere Emancipator
If you can't afford a couple of dozen thousand nuyen for protection in a pirate-heavy area, then I guess all talk of satellites etc. is pointless. The merchant vessels wouldn't have a single guard, and no one would give a fuck if they went missing.

If someone actually wants to protect their shipping, small missiles are a plenty cheap alternative that allow you to safely sink any smaller vessels at 5km+. Considering the cost of having at least 6-8 trained safety personnel on each ship, 100k nuyen.gif per sunk pirate boat ain't bad. M2HBs wouldn't be much cheaper, unless you have to sink dozens or hundreds boats.

I'll go ahead and assume that a Force 6 spirit is not enough to protect you from weaponry that will poke big holes into more than 10" of armor steel.

QUOTE (Thain)
Anti-missile missiles, anti-aircraft guns, close-in weapon systems (e.g. the phalanx mentioned above), jammers, and good old fashioned chaff...

Now I've never spent much time aboard sailing ships, but I would assume launching large missiles from one would be a really, really bad idea. Unless all those ropes don't mind this. Plus once you mount large, metallic superstructures, active radars, etc. on the boat, the stealth aspect starts to evaporate.

Anyway, if you have all the high-level corporate contacts and the tens of millions of nuyen needed for an effective missile defense system for your Dutchman, why the hell are you stuck pirating small cargo ships for pistachios and sneakers?
PBTHHHHT
If you're hitting large scale merchant ships and such, those are multi-million dollar investments. If the area is started to get bad with pirates, the corporations in the Srun world will do something about it. So they use up a few hundred thousand nuyens to take out a pirate problem, ok, they'll be gone for awhile, worth it more than losing millions in nuyen.

If the pirates cause too much havok, why wouldn't the corp and gov't form a taskforce to deal with the pirates?
Thain
First, that is not an anti-missile missile. Now, we didn't ever actual use missiles for anything in my USCG days (although, there are Coasties who do), but my gut tells me that is probably a cruise missile.

This is a AIM-7M Sparrow air-to-air missile missile being loaded, I use this pic for scale. Because the Sea Sparrow is, for all purposes that matter here, basically the same dang missile. It looks more like this when launched. Not ideal on a masted ship, but really no more dangerous than cannons. Now, the sensor systems needed to make it work are very, very bulky... but they were designed in the 1960's/70's... for ships that were built in the 1940's.

In 2070, we can fit much more powerful sensor systems into a standard passenger sedan... Ask you local Rigger about his Eurocar Westwind. wink.gif

But, I really think a CIWS is the better bet. Much more cost effective, and just as reliable.





nezumi
AE is right to a degree. The ship certainly wouldn't want to mount any launchers or ECM gear or what not. That increases their signature. However, the freighter might. The launcher is $5k. The cheapest missile is $350k (although it's a torpedo, so it wouldn't affect our example boat since its too slow). The next effective missile is $450k. This isn't a small amount of money, and I have no idea how much it costs to maintain them and what sort of skills and cyber the human pilots need to use it. Assuming the only cost is the initial purchase, and we can be fairly certain it'll destroy what it hits, it would perhaps make sense to load half a dozen on super-tankers, and maybe two on smaller ships, in addition to the small-arms. But that's still a lot of cash, and not something they'd spend idly. It would be worth figuring out how likely a missile is to actually hit the ship given someone of below-average skill (probably a 2, no more than a 3, but likely a VCR 1 or 2).
Austere Emancipator
The RIM-66 SM-2 Block III isn't an anti-missile missile? Well, I guess the Navy doesn't come out and call them exactly that, so have it your way.

If you believe the sorts of sensors capable of identifying, tracking and accurately guiding in missiles on high-supersonic, stealthy, ECM-capable objects in extremely short time frames are tiny and ultra-cheap, I don't see what the problem with finding the Dutchman is.

Cannon-based CIWSs are pretty far from reliable against modern (let alone 2070s) anti-ship missiles. They would be great for reducing the Dutchman to kindling, however.

nezumi: SR4 doesn't have any equivalents to the M-GM Outlaw missiles from Rigger 3? Those have range of 10km, have the same Intelligence as AIMs and SAMs (ie. are among the most accurate missiles in the game), are plenty capable of sinking boats, and cost, at most, 35,000 nuyen.gif each. [Any of the prices I've discussed above are in real-life terms with $1 = 1 nuyen.gif , BTW.]
nezumi
I was looking at Rigger 3's anti-ship missiles, not SR4.
Austere Emancipator
Ah. Then M-GM Outlaw Block IIIs it is. smile.gif
Thain
The RIM-66 SM-2 is a medium range surface-to-air missile, at least, if my copy of Jane's is to be beleived.
Austere Emancipator
Right. And the air targets it is primarily meant to engage include anti-ship missiles, just like with the RIM-7.
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